Hair styling involves techniques that require creativity and technical precision. Training and experience are paramount to being successful at hair styling. However, even the most highly trained and experienced stylist must deal with difficult hair styles on a daily basis and with customers that request and expect precision cuts and styles. One specific challenge to many stylists or barbers is the need to accurately and reproducibly trim a customer's hairline on both sides of the head; resulting in mirror image cuts on either side of the head that are both straight and reflect the customer's request. The hairline across the forehead and temples presents unique difficulty, given the lack of useful measuring tools to ensure reproducibility on both sides. Of particular concern for a stylist or barber are those customers that have very short hair, where slight imperfections in shape or angles of the hairline are highly noticeable and undesirable.
Currently known combs are different from the current invention in specific and critical ways. Prior combs, such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Application Nos. 20100101596, 20080078418 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,107,869, are focused on the angle and length of the hair and disregard the hairline. These combs do not provide a terminal, fixed reference point that extends from the spine of the comb which is useful for very short hair to prevent imperfections in the resulting hair cut or style. These combs also do not provide a slideable, second reference point.
While other prior combs provide means to measure angles of hair styles, such as U.S. Pat. Application No. 20100101596, they do not allow the user to reproducibly maintain a certain measurement of the hairline via a terminal, fixed reference point and second, slideable reference point. Other prior combs have slideable points, but these slideable points interfere with both establishing two discrete points from which the barber or stylist may work with clippers to accurately reproduce a hair cut or style and with the general use of the comb itself. The prior combs are simply too bulky for use with clippers, for example.
The present invention is directed to overcoming the issues and limitations of prior art combs set forth above.